Tuesday, April 17, 2012

A generation ago, we lost the Future. For over a century, a better, more functional, more equitable, and technologically cooler place was tantalizingly just out of reach, but certain to become today, soon. Snapshots of the Future arrived as drawings and models created by designers and artists in tune with the new, and beyond the new to the currently impossible. Anything we could dream was possible, and it was just a matter of time before it became everyday.

The recent Age of Irony took a scant view of the Future's unbridled optimism; forward-looking, visionary projects, from architecture and urban planning to product and technology design, had shown a fundamental flaw in the Future, a deep contradiction within its gleaming heart; the Future was not for everyone. Or, if it was planned for everyone, these envisioned socialist utopias smelled totalitarian, and had proved, when actually built, to be failures on a grand scale.

The MRD-1 before the record attempt; the rider (21 year old Urs Wenger, an Egli employee) carried his own streamlining, harking back to 1920s efforts to cheat the wind...

The tall housing projects with surrounding parkland, so geometrically beautiful in Le Corbusier's 'Plan Voison for Paris', had been built on a smaller scale in New York and Paris, and by the 1970s had become dangerous slums. Critic Jane Jacobs rightly assailed such out-of-touch and un-human urban planning, and her influential analysis of what makes cities healthy was groin-kick to Future planning. Whether homespun like Frank Lloyd Wright, socialist like Corbusier, or outright fascist, rigorous urban planning looked bitterly dystopian by the 1980s - we had seen the Future; it wore jackboots, and aged badly.

The Colani-Egli MRD-1 produced 320hp from its turbocharged, nitrous-breathing engine, and broke the World Land Speed Record for 10km from a standing start, at 170.26mph (272.41kmh); his top speed was 330kmh (198mph). The record was previously held by the Honda ELF, with full Works support of rider Ron Haslam (265.4kmh).

Luigi Colani is an old-school future-dreamer, the type of hyperconfident character who skeptics disregarded during the ironic 1980s. His career as an industrial designer began in 1953, at the special projects division of McDonnell-Douglas aircraft, after studying aerodynamics at the Collége de Sorbonne. During the late 1950s and early 60s, he worked with several Italian auto makers (Fiat, Alfa Romeo, etc), creating special bodies and winning design awards.

The RFB 'Fanliner' of 1977; powered by a Wankel engine (an ideal aircraft engine, now used extensively in RQ-7 Shadow 'Drone' aircraft by the US military...which are powered by Norton engines! UAV Engines was spun off from Norton, with David Garside leaving motorcycles to continue developing the Wankel motor he designed for BSA, then Norton. His engine won the British F1 championship, the Isle of Man TT, and now patrols the skies in the Middle East...)

By the 1970s he was famous for his increasingly outrageous organic shapes, which he calls 'biodynamic', in imitation of Nature's graceful forms, and designed products ranging from tea sets and cutlery to heavy articulated trucks and aircraft. “Soft
shapes follow us through life. Nature does not make angles. Hips and bellies and breasts — all the
best designers have to do with erotic shapes and fluidity of form.”

Erotic, feminine forms applied to wheeled vehicles...

Feeling underappreciated in Europe, he relocated to Japan in 1982, and flourished, producing both 'improbable' designs for vehicles, and very up-to-date products, including the first 'ear buds' for Sony (1989...long before the iPod), and the first ergonomic body for a camera (the Canon T90 of '86), along with uniforms for SwissAir and the German police. Among
his many transportation projects, Colani has long dabbled with
motorcycle design, from sculptural shape-studies to creative bodywork
over incredible machines, most notably the Münch Mammut and
Egli-Kawasaki - an incredible turbocharged fire-breather with 320hp,
which set the 10km flying-start speed record in 1986.

Colani doesn't consider himself a designer; “I am a three-dimensional philosopher of the future.” With the necessary combination of third-person egotism and unbridled imagination, Colani developed from an industrial design innovator to a full-blown psychedelic guru of flowing organic shapes for every application. While he sounds ripe for ironist derision, Colani's work is enjoying a resurgence after a long period of embarrassed silence from industrial designers.

Luigi Colani

After decades of developing, envisioning, and championing flowing organic shapes, the Future has finally caught up with Colani, and he is enjoying another day in the sun. The practical development of computer 3D modeling, and more recently the rise of rapid prototyping systems, has given 'Colani's children' - Zaha Hadid, Ross Lovegrove, and the new generation of organic-shape disciples - the kind of real-world relevance unthinkable in the 1960s and 70s, when Colani's work seemed utterly fanciful, even self-indulgent. Now superwealthy backers and attention-hungry governments actually build structures which seemed impossible a mere 20 years ago. Colani's future has arrived.

The Wankel design was used as a model airplane power plant in the mid 80's. It was a .30 cu in. and very powerful and light. It had one draw back: when it was hot it couldn't be started again. They can still be had but none of my modeler friends has ever seen one in use.

Colani is the epitome of the Mad Scientist Genius that no one is listening to but everybody should ! The guy's got more going on design and aerodynamics wise than all the major and name M/C and Auto manufactures combined .

The fact that he's also a Cigar chomping bit of an ego maniac only adds to his .... errr ..... charm ? Whatever I've been in awe of the guy for years

If he ever tosses out a Colani guitar .... well my armory may have to grow by one ;-)

Re: Luigi Colani,Mr. Colani's first name was/is Lutz, not Luigi, a moniker he gave himself. And the bodywork on the record machine from 1986 had to be taken off, as the bike was unrideable with it. Caused problems with the sponsors for Fritz Egli.Worth a mention, I think!

Hi Jan, yes, Mr. Colani was born with the name Lutz, from Swiss parentage. He's an interesting character...Do you have the source for your information about the record attempt? I would be very interested to read this.

The Egli is a fascinating and beautiful machine in any case, a work of art really.

Ah, the story of the Egli-Colani record attempt is a sad one. The two sketched the bike and applied for an attempt. Hein Gericke put up a sum corresponding to 5000 Euros in today's money (then, 1987, 10,000 Marks) and the same money if the attempt was successful. When it turned out the aerodynamic egg didn't work, the team took it off and put the regular fairing and seat on the bike and ran the attempt (at Nardo, Italy). The later famous tuner Urs Wenger (Swissauto; apprentice with Fritz Egli at the time) then posted an average speed of 272.41kph over 10kms from a standing start (previous record 265.4). Unfortunately, the recorded time was never approved as no FIM representative had been present at the time. Egli then had to give Gericke back the 10,000 Marks and then pay another 3500 because the Colani bodywork with the other sponsor stickers had not been used.Egli later called the body work "simply dangerous".Fritz Egli himself, today, builds model steam engines and has a large collection of these at home and for serious fun he rides a heavily modified sidecar in the Alps, preferrably in Italy - a very interesting character.I made an interview with him for a Scandinavian magazine a few years ago and he is well worth a visit!/Jan Leek

I just sent a comment to the Egli/Colani post, but forgot to mention that the whole story is in the EGLI biography (subtitle: "the official book", 2007).Nevertheless, you may find him interesting enough for a visit, should you be in the area of Bettwil in Switzerland.

UPCOMING AUCTIONS:

Bonhams Feature:

Subscribe! Its Free!

SINLESS CYCLES!

Another Sinless Machine:

1929 Cleveland Tornado

THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE MOTORCYCLES

Still #1 - 1915 Cyclone sold for $842k

'The Vintagent' on Facebook

THE STORY OF MOTORCYCLING

The world of Motorcycles has all the ingredients of a good, enriching drama; heroic deeds, political intrigue, design brilliance, cut-throat business practices, quirky characters, national tensions, cultural biases, eros and thanatos.When diving into the murk of motorcycle history, we find unexpected riches...everything which makes this life interesting, and worth living.Motorcycles per se are just metal; it is individuals who animate them, and inhabit the stories within this site. We provide meaning to the metal, and in telling the story of Motorcycling, we tell the story of our world.